Hidden features you discovered in your car after regular usage

This is a discussion on Hidden features you discovered in your car after regular usage within The Indian Car Scene, part of the BHP India category; Originally Posted by chaxy
The homing lights proved to be a irritating feature on my safari 2.2 because anywhere i ...

The homing lights proved to be a irritating feature on my safari 2.2 because anywhere i parked the car people around called me to remind that the car lights are ON.
Later i discovered the solution to disable the automatic lights when remote locking the car - First press the unlock button and then the lock button. This way the lights will not turn on while remote locking in the night.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kaviprem

Awesome, Thanks Chaxy.
I will try this in my Safari too.

Prem.

Quote:

Originally Posted by agbenny

I experience the same with my Scorpio, which is a useless feature. We rarely get a chance to park the car in a black utter dark areas where you can not see your Palm, right?
I have to try the solution you've mentioned.

Firstly they are called "follow me home lights."

The same feature is there on the Xylo too. These light up once you remove the key from the ignition and open the front driver door.
Simply turn off the lights manually and get off.

I recently found out that my accent has a speed setting for the intermittent wipers.

It is a circular knob on the wiper control, where you can adjust the delay of the wiper on intermittent mode. If it is changed to fast, it comes on every 3-4 seconds and if out to slow, it comes on every 10 seconds or so

Spoke to several accent owners, and many were surprised to discover this

I have yet not seen the correct temperature on DZire.
Its mostly off by 2-4 degrees, depending on the time of the day.
Its mostly accurate at nights.

I had noticed that in my safari...a temp diff of 2-4 degrees...and the TASS guy told me the temperature reads the temperature of a place inside the body/cabin where the termostat is located...hence the location of the thermostat makes the difference...our cars do not have uniform cooling all around u see...

I have yet not seen the correct temperature on DZire.
Its mostly off by 2-4 degrees, depending on the time of the day.
Its mostly accurate at nights.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rajismine

I had noticed that in my safari...a temp diff of 2-4 degrees...and the TASS guy told me the temperature reads the temperature of a place inside the body/cabin where the termostat is located...hence the location of the thermostat makes the difference...our cars do not have uniform cooling all around u see...

It is really difficult to have a temperature sensor that accurately measures the exterior ambient temperature. Even on some very expensive cars, you will see similar errors.

There are several reasons: The outside temperature varies from point to point (sunny, shadowy, windy etc.) and also with wind speed. Ignoring wind-chill effects, we want to measure the "steady state temperature" of the surrounding air. How would we measure it? If we place a sensor on the exterior part of the car body, then when the car is in motion, this sensor will get severely affected by the fast air moving on it (artificial wind-chill effect) and measure a lower temperature. On the other hand, if we place the sensor somewhere inside the car body (e.g. in the engine compartment), then it will show artificially higher temperature because the engine bay has a good degree of thermal insulation from the surrounding.

Basically we want a sensor in a moving car that will be in "thermal equilibrium" with the surrounding, and this is not a trivial task!

Further, If I am not mistaken, in many European and American cars, the purpose of these sensors is to measure the "road temperature" and not just the "ambient" temperature. The motivation is that this reading could warn the driver when the road is close to freezing temperature and there is possibility of ice formation on road. In such cases, the sensor is commonly located under the front bumper, as close to the road as possible. Now this also has a drawback: in summer days (or in general when it is sunny), the road surface will be at a higher temperature than the surrounding air, and these sensors then show an artificial high number. Also, when the car is moving, these show an artificially lower number (because these are located on the exterior, though under the bumper, and are again subject to wind-chill effects), and will show a "icy road condition" warning much before it actually is true. But since this error is on the conservative side, it is better to tolerate this error than the other way round (sensor showing higher temperatures when the road is close to freezing point). In my Audi A4 in the US, I had noticed that I used to get the "icy roads" warning on the MID when the temperatures were actually close to 35F (instead of exact 32F, the freezing point*). These errors were on the conservative sides and made sense.

In summary, this is a difficult problem unless some exotic and expensive technique is used.

Thanks,
-AD

* I am ignoring here the fact that the freezing point for the water on road will change due to the pressure applied when the tyre of a vehicle moves on it. Due to this, it is not theoretically correct to say that 32F or 0C is the freezing point for the water on the road.

Just realised that the 24-hour Mahindra helpline has been embossed on the black plastic portion of my Scorpio's key :P

Not a hidden feature but Indica V2 / Indigo offer a lot of options when it comes to wiper operations which even some expensive cars don't.
There is low, high and intermittent like usual. The intermittent time period is adjustible unlike many cars in its class or above. The windshield washer-cum-wipers is operated with a button on the stalk whereas if the stalk is pulled towards the driver, then the wipers just wipe (w/o the washer) for two-three times.

I recently found out that my accent has a speed setting for the intermittent wipers.

It is a circular knob on the wiper control, where you can adjust the delay of the wiper on intermittent mode. If it is changed to fast, it comes on every 3-4 seconds and if out to slow, it comes on every 10 seconds or so

Spoke to several accent owners, and many were surprised to discover this

yeah, i found this in my Getz too 2.5yrs later

is this standard across all variants or does it come only on the higher ones like the GLS and GLX?

I discovered after few months in dzire that you can adjust the beam of the headlight. You can make it on upper side or on lower side as you want. It is helpful when driving in night in ghats. Also i have fog lamps in my car but forgot to switch it on in my recent trip :( I always forget that it has company fitted fog lamps.

I experience the same with my Scorpio, which is a useless feature. We rarely get a chance to park the car in a black utter dark areas where you can not see your Palm, right?
I have to try the solution you've mentioned.

in my scorpio, the "follow me home headlights" are activated only if the automatic headlight switch is ON. the solution is- simply switch OFF the auto headlight.